Skaven players - what do you buy for your rats?

I'm asking because I came to a point where I don't know what else to buy. Since armour is a big no in Eshin way (both in fluff and in game) I have nothing to do with the money, only buying weeping blades and consumables as they pop up. I toyed with idea of buying warplock but this would require a lot of skills and with no pistolier and eagle eyes I'm not interested in any ranged weapons. So.... how do you spend your warp tokens?

Well everyrat has at least studded leather I know it's not super fluff but has saved my bacon, they also all wear helmets either half or full. I've one bear handed, one with cleaver and pistol, one with spear and throwing knife, leader has the best armour a cleaver and daggers my last guy has the metal shield and the spear that looks like a war scythe( I forget it's name). If you want a guy by guy I can up load if you want.

Armour Slows them down a bit but well worth it I don't know how many armour saves I've made against stupid arrows and daggers and such.

The pistol is decent enough when it hits (which isn't all that much due to its limited range and having to reload, it also reveals your rat. I much prefer the knives.)

My frenzy bear handed close combat guy usually rips thru charged archers with like 4 regular attacks with a tail whip, which i must say is an upgrade every Skaven should just start with. or at least drop the ws requirement.

In Mordheim you couldn't buy gromril and ithilamar because they counted as a heavy armour equivalent. But I agree on a long rifle - it was quite common amongst us, skven players, to advance night runners with shooting and infiltrate. We often gave them weapons trainig, crossbow, quickshot, other shooting skills and set him high up with infiltrate on some tower roof. It always worked.

Marquand - I have used a pistolier with two warplocks. Not impressive. Still can't penetrate armor and he struggles to kill medium troops. I regard him as a beginner because he's so fragile and unlikely to kill in a single charge. He's not part of my initial charging plan.

And I don't know if using pistols in HtH uses the WS or BS ? So I guess I have to bump them both up. More EXP gone.

I've got all 5 of my rats with Fighting Claws, Eshin Robes, and either masks, or studded masks. Every rat has a set of fighting claws, and mastery plus an additional attack for that oh so sweet three attack ambush. Then a Rat Ogre.

Yeah they're weak and won't take much of a pounding... But I've pretty much won the majority of all my battles with them. With the Eshin Robes and masks, they've got an Init value higher than most others. Usually I try to position my ambush far enough ahead of the enemy warband that I can wait for them to come into range. Delay them with the giant rats. And defer the turn till the end of the round... So after deferring the turn, once nearly everybody is in range... I run everybody out at the end of the turn. Once the end of that turn is over, the beginning of the turn... is mine again because I've got higher initiative... Soooooo most enemy warbands usually bite the warp dust within about 2-3 turns if that. had a few 1 turn TKO's before... but mostly 2-3.

I will say it's fun to play against Skaven AI though... it's like trying to see who will show first... But then again, I can appreciate the irony of two warbands of giant Rat monsters... playing a game of cat and mouse... >.>

I think I might be the odd-one out here with my warband. I've had no luck getting to the point of using weeping blades or fighting claws effectively (I have no luck using them). As a result the overwhelming majority of my warband are spear-wielders. As a few of them have mastered it - they get the range bonus. With the awesome move speed of Skaven, this means I can usually dog-pile 5-8 skaven on a single target at once. And, sadly - I usually need it. But, it does oftten mean I can outright beat their most damaging unit in one go.